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They say death is a
great equalizer. The oppressor, the oppressed, the rich and the poor, the
privileged and the deprived, the atheist and the fanatic, the prince and the
pauper are all equal in death. They lie. They are wrong. All people are not
equal in death. Death is as unequal as is life and as monstrously cruel. How we are treated
in death is defined by the people we leave behind. We are quite helpless in our
posthumous passivity. It is also defined by how we have lived. If we have
mattered to people as name and person or only as number. What is our identity
in death, numerical reality or philosophical rallying point? Many things define
where we find ourselves when the cruel chariot of death has run over the
fragrant floral lives and the dust settles down, giving way to the stench of
dead body. From a very
philosophical value, each life matters a universe in value, from a very
cynical, realistic and analytic value, the quantum of loss out of any death
will be defined by the leng…

Nationalism is a
fragile idea, which as the Roman Emperor, the philosopher-kind would allude to,
in his dying day, when he asks his General Maximus, “What is Rome?” and then
answers himself, explaining that, “One can only whisper her name, anything more
than a whisper, and it will fade away.” Nation is a
delicate thing, therein lies its strength. It joins the patches of varied
lands, groups of varied people. Intellectuals have tried defining it in
earnest. Some have succeeded. Some were really intellectuals, who searched for
truth. Others were pretending to be intellectuals, their intent, to use it as a
tool to propagate their idea. Their wish to propagate their own ideas was not
driven as much by their conviction with truth being on their side, rather on
their own interests. Truth is not the
stagnant water of a muddy pond. Truth is the running river. A running river is
certain of its existence but changes in its form. True intellect will always
search for the truth. We have, of late,…

Rating: If you are a writer, Must read. If you are not- Still, a must read.

I have just
finished reading Middlemarch. It is
quite a heavy and voluminous book. The story slowly rises, very slowly, spread
across so many deeply developed and intricately engaging characters- the people
of a fictional rustic town of Middlemarch
in the 18th Century England. The narrative and the story is strong,
well-built with huge shoulders to carry various causes which it alludes to. The beauty and
charm of reading a classic of those times is that while these stories were
written when Europe convalesced under the forces which were to set it on a path
to glory; it is to the credit to wonderful writers like George Eliot (Real name, Mary
Ann Evans (1819-1880)), that they never allow the narrative to surrender to
their causes. While the story deals with love, marriage as prime theme, it is
not a romance novel, as is evident by the male pen-name taken by the writer in
those times. There will of course, be allus…